If we do not stop to help each other, what do we become?
11 hours ago
- D shares a personal story from 2013 during the Zamboanga siege, balancing military duty, college coursework, and trauma, relying on a Microsoft Surface for homework.
- Despite having family and friends who were engineers, D received no help from them; instead, random strangers on Stack Overflow provided assistance, which meant more than just technical answers.
- The help from the Stack Overflow community gave D a sense of connection, being part of something, and feeling that they mattered, especially during a critical time.
- D contrasts LLMs with human communities, noting that while an LLM could provide answers, it cannot offer the care, time, and emotional support that humans gave.
- The email expresses sadness over the decline of online communities like Stack Overflow, being replaced by LLMs, and compares the loss to 'losing gravity'.
- D concludes that LLMs should serve as a reminder to nurture genuine relationships and communities, not owned by billionaires, where people stop to help each other, ending with the rhetorical question: 'If we do not stop to help each other, what do we become?'